Girls, Power and International Development

The United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign has been critiqued for depoliticising global and gender inequalities, portraying girls from the Global South as responsible for lifting entire communities out of poverty and encouraging girls in the Global North to see themselves as the saviours of their Southern counterparts.

Drawing on focus groups with Girl Up members from the UK, US and Malawi, this book demonstrates how girls reflect critically on the Girl Up discourse, reject its individualistic vision of girls’ empowerment and interact with their Northern/Southern counterparts in a spirit of mutual learning and respect. Its analysis demonstrates how the girls use participation in the campaign to develop their own more complex, radical and collective visions of girls’ empowerment.